Thesis (Ph. D.)--Case Western Reserve University, 1984. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 133-136).

Compared to other online communities, relatively little is written academically about 4chan. This is likely because of the widespread use of politically incorrect language and images, the ephemerality of its content and its generally negative reputation. 4chan is a “image-based bulletin board where anyone can post comments and share images” related to a subject (4chan FAQ). When many hear 4chan, what often comes to mind is a dangerous website full of malicious internet trolls and hackers. While its undeniable that malicious internet trolls and hackers do frequent the site, journalists including those from Fox News, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and so on, assume an association between 4chan headline events and the general 4chan population (Dewey 2014; Fox 2009; Smith 2008). This ‘dangerous place’ has created or popularized numerous memes, or cultural genes, that many enjoy, such as Advice Animals, LolCats and RickRolling (Dawkins 1990; Smith 2008). The purpose of this paper is to expand the understanding of 4chan's culture and examine the usefulness of the moe anthropormophizations (a cute personification of a non-human thing) of 4chan’s boards, the Board-tans, to understanding each board’s culture and 4chan’s larger culture. The paper aims to shed light on the often misinterpreted internet cultural juggernaut that is 4chan.org, specifically identifying aspects about its cultural identity, and methods of communication.

The Internet is affecting people's lives today through their personal and social relationships, professional activities, and their spiritual lives and religious practices. Academic studies in the field of communication and religion have been done frequently, but now in the digital era of social networks, studies are being directed to online religion on the Internet, which is ushering in a concept of digital religion. This case study examined how participants in the online Christian Forum seek and/or benefit from their spiritual activities on the Internet. It used a qualitative approach with e-mail interviews in a growing religious activity online, showing the relationship and the impact of it on the users' spiritual/religious lives. As participants bring to their online religious practices their church or offline church experiences, most of them are actively involved in only their virtual or online community, in contrast to previous studies that showed the Internet being used as a complement for offline church involvement. Findings herein point to a strong faith/spiritual activity on the Internet in different sites and discussion forums. People are seeking online what they are not getting in their offline churches, relative to spiritual/Biblical content to aid their Christian faith, as well as for personal relationships in an online community. Thus study reveals a paradox in two areas of Christian faith practices online: the online experiences don't substitute for the offline church in worship and on face-to-face relationships as a community; and the participants miss those offline church experiences. Despite the fact that they miss them, they are not there physically, but practice their faith online. Participants in online Christian Forums in this study also revealed some distinctive individual/personal concepts about Christian doctrines and traditional historic practices which are not aligned with some specific beliefs and historical practices of the Christian church. / text

The rapid development of online social networks (OSNs) renders them a powerful platform for information diffusion on a massive scale. OSNs generate enormous propagation traces. An important question is how to model the real-world information diffusion process. Although considerable studies have been conducted in this field, the temporal characteristics have not been fully addressed yet. This thesis addresses the issue of modeling the temporal dynamics of the information diffusion process. Based on empirical findings drawn from large-scale propagation traces of a popular OSN in China, we demonstrate that the temporal characteristics has a significant impact on the diffusion dynamics. Hence, a series of new temporal information diffusion models have been proposed by incorporating these temporal features. Experimental results demonstrate that these proposed models are more accurate and practical than existing discrete diffusion models. Moreover, one application of information diffusion models, i.e., the revenue maximization problem, is studied. Specifically, the thesis consists of three major parts: 1) preliminaries, i.e., introduction of research platform and collected dataset, 2) modeling social influence diffusion from three different temporal aspects, and 3) monetizing OSNs through designing intelligent pricing strategies in the diffusion process to realize the goal of revenue maximization. Firstly, the research platform is introduced and the statistical properties of the data derived from this platform are investigated. We choose Renren, the dominant social network website in China, as our research platform and study its information propagation mechanisms. Specifically, we concentrate on the propagation of “sharing video” behaviors, and collect data on more than 2.8 million Renren users and over 209 million diffusion traces. The analysis result shows that the video access patterns in OSNs differ significantly from Youtube-like systems, which makes understanding the video propagation behaviors in OSNs an important research task. Secondly, the temporal modeling of information diffusion is explored. By investigating temporal features using real diffusion traces, we find that three factors should be considered in building realistic diffusion models, including, information propagation latency, multiple influential sources and user diversities. We then develop models to explain the information propagation process by incorporating these factors, and demonstrate that the models reflect reality well. Finally, revenue maximization in the information diffusion process is studied. Specifically, the pricing factor is explicitly incorporated into the product diffusion process. To realize the goal of revenue maximization, we develop a Dynamic Programming Based Heuristic (DPBH) to obtain the optimal pricing sequence. Application of the DPBH in the revenue maximization problem shows that it performs well in both the expected revenue achieved and in running time. This leads to fundamental ramifications to many related OSN marketing applications. / published_or_final_version / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Information diffusion in online social networks has received attention in both research and actual applications. The prevalence of online social networking sites offers the possibility of mining for necessary information. However, existing influence maximization algorithms and newly proposed influence diffusion models do not distinguish between seed nodes (or pilot users) and nonseed nodes and assume all nodes are cooperative in propagating influence. This thesis investigates models and heuristics for noncooperative information diffusion in online social networks. It consists of three parts: tragedy of the commons in online social search (OSS), influence maximization in noncooperative social networks under the linear threshold model (LTM), and influence maximization in noncooperative social networks under the independent cascade model (ICM). Firstly, the tragedy of the commons problem in OSS is considered. I propose an analytical model that captures the behavior of OSS nodes, and, from a gaming-strategy point of view, analyze various strategies an individual node can utilize to allocate its awareness capacity. Based on this I derive the Pareto inefficiency in terms of the system cost. An incentive scheme which can lead selfish nodes to the “social optimal” state of the whole system is also proposed. Extensive simulations show that the strategy with our proposed incentive mechanism outperforms other strategies in terms of the system cost and the search success rate. The second part of the thesis presents the first detailed analysis of influence maximization in noncooperative social networks under the LTM. The influence propagation process is structured into two stages, namely, seed node selection and influence diffusion. In the former, I introduce a generalized maximum-flow-based analytical framework to model the noncooperative behavior of individual users and develop a new seed node selection strategy. In the latter, I propose a game-theoretic model to characterize the behavior of noncooperative nodes and design a Vickrey-Clarke-Groves-like (VCG-like) scheme to incentivise cooperation. Then I study the budget allocation problem between the two stages, and show that a marketer can utilize the two proposed strategies to tackle noncooperation intelligently. The proposed schemes are evaluated on large coauthorship networks, and the results show that the proposed seed node selection scheme is very robust to noncooperation and the VCG-like scheme can effectively stimulate a node to become cooperative. Finally, I study the influence maximization problem in noncooperative social networks under the ICM using the same two-stage framework originally proposed for LTM. For the seed selection stage, a modified hierarchy-based seed node selection strategy which can take node noncooperation into consideration is introduced. The VCG-like incentive scheme designed for the influence diffusion stage under LTM can also be utilized for ICM in a similar manner. Then I also study the budget allocation problem between the two stages. The evaluation results show that the performance of the hierarchy-based seed node selection scheme is satisfactory in a noncooperative social network and the VCG-like scheme can effectively encourage node cooperation. / published_or_final_version / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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This report provides an overview of some of the emergent current practices in using technology to evaluate learning. It starts by examining terminology associated with learning evaluation in terms of literature related to the subject. Several innovative models and tools in practice are discussed in terms of their application, situations they are best suited to, advantages or disadvantages they might have and theories they are based on. Some of these are easy to apply and more practically implementable, others are indicative of advanced technologies that are likely to come into use in the future. The report concludes with a few possible scenarios regarding the context in which these technologies and methods are to be used and the real world considerations that would concern the stakeholders. / text

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Presented at the Arizona Library Association Conference, November 2013,

Presented at the Arizona Library Association Conference, November 2013. / In the Fall of 2012, The Access and Information Services Team (AIST) at the University of Arizona Libraries instituted the use of a Course Management System (CMS) to effectively train both classified staff and student workers in a ubiquitous and self-paced eLearning environment. Through the use of the tools embedded in the CMS along with the creation of self-paced online tutorials and competency based quizzing, the AIST team has significantly reduced staff time allocated to in person training and increased efficiencies in providing uniform circulation, reference, and policy training that is available to students and staff on a 24/7 basis. The training sites provide an all-inclusive environment for both trainees in gaining competency in core skills needed to staff a 24 hour library, as well as for supervisors to be able to effectively track and manage staff and student progress.